The evening featured a conversation between Meta’s VP of product management Khushboo Taneja and veteran tech journalist Adam Lashinsky.

Industry heavyweights at the dinner included investor Jeff Sagansky, CAA head of strategic development Alexandra Shannon, Fox Corporation CTO Melody Hildebrandt, filmmaker and author Justine Bateman, Status founder and editor-in-chief Oliver Darcy, Propagate Content co-founder and co-CEO Howard Owens, Capital Entertainment CEO Aaron Kaplan, former LA Times executive editor Kevin Merida, Deep Voodoo COO Brian Robillard and film financier and former Relativity head Ryan Kavanaugh.

Meta leadership at the dinner included Public Figure Innovation Partnerships of NorAm lead Max Brabant, strategic partnerships lead Charlton Gholson and Meta’s AI communications lead Amanda Felix.

See photos from the event below.

Veteran tech journalist Adam Lashinsky and Khushboo Taneja, VP, Product Management, Meta

Amanda Felix, Communications, AI, Meta and Khushboo Taneja, VP, Product Management, Meta

Guests mingle at Meta Dinner

Guests at Meta Dinner

Jeff Sagansky, Co-Founder Eagle Equity Partners and Sharon Waxman, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, TheWrap

Brian Robillard, COO, Deep Voodoo and Sean King, GM, Media & Entertainment, Veritone

Kevin Merida, Former Executive Editor, Los Angeles Times & Board Member, LA Local News Initiative, Meta Dinner

Aaron Kaplan, Executive Producer/CEO of Kapital Entertainment Melody Hildebrandt, CTO, Fox Corporation and Howard Owens, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Propagate Content

Yves Bergquist, Director, AI & Neuroscience in Media, USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, Meta Dinner

Justine Bateman, Filmmaker, Author & Founder, CREDO23, Howard Owens, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Propagate Content and Sharon Waxman, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, TheWrap

Charlton Gholson, Strategic Partnerships, Meta and Sharon Waxman, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, TheWrap

Howard Owens, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Propagate Content, introducing himself at the dinner

Justine Bateman, Filmmaker, Author & Founder, CREDO23 speaking at the Meta Dinner

Sharon Waxman, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, TheWrap and Ryan Kavanaugh, Film Financier, Producer, Co-Owner, Triller

Lynne Segall, Chief Revenue Officer, and Ryan Kavanaugh

Laura Holson, Award-Winning former New York Times journalist, Founder, The Box Sessions speaking at the Meta Dinner

Brian Robillard, COO, Deep Voodoo speaking at the Meta Dinner

Status newsletter founder Oliver Darcy speaks to Sean King and Melody Hildebrandt

Guests including Jeremy Barber, Partner in the Motion Picture Literary and Talent Departments at United Talent Agency, at the Meta Dinner

The post Inside TheWrap’s Inaugural Tech Dinner Sponsored by Meta | Photos appeared first on TheWrap.

“AI is not intelligence. It’s mimicking intelligence,” Candis Welch, the Chief Equity Officer for California’s Department of Rehabilitation, said. “It’s mimicking what our society is putting in. So if our society … has ableism and different levels of discrimination, it’s not going to produce something different when you type it into ChatGPT, or whatever you may use.”

“A perfect example of that is if you were to ask AI to provide you a visual of leadership and make it diverse, it’s going to be all Caucasian males, and the diversity is going to be one Caucasian female,” she continued. “That is not the true telling of our society, so it’s lacking in that area.”

Experts on the panel at TheWrap’s annual Grill conference covering AI’s role in disability access and visibility in film and TV, presented by Easterseals Southern California, agreed there are some pretty significant limitations.

Alongside moderator Kristen Lopez, Welch, actress, entrepreneur and disability advocate Lolo Spencer, comedian Adam Conover and filmmaker Ashley Eakin expounded on why AI struggles to reflect a diverse society, and the practical ways it can help.

Eakin, a writer and director, suggested that anyone who works with people who have disabilities should use AI to recommend accommodations.

“I encourage people out there who work with other people with disabilities, you can go to AI and say, ‘Hey, how can I make my set more accessible for this community?'” she said. “It spits you out a whole long list of amazing accommodations, and I think that’s ways that we can be learning.”

“But then also hire the production accessibility coordinator, because people’s needs are different,” she continued.

The panelists largely agreed that AI isn’t capable of recognizing those individual needs, even when prompted.

Spencer, who stars on Max’s “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” noted that she’s played around with text-to-image software herself to experiment with what a program might spit out when asked to create a character in a wheelchair, and the results were laughable.

“AI wouldn’t even be able to formulate what that looks like. I mean, I’ve used Midjourney before, because I was testing that out just playing around,” she recalled. “And, you know, you type in ‘wheelchair,’ my God – it was everything but a wheelchair.”

Conover agreed that AI is not actually intelligence, and offered an alternative.

“The amount of attention that is going towards AI versus — if you take one little fraction of the money spent on AI and spend it addressing disability directly, it would be incredibly effective,” he said.

About TheGrill: For 15 years, TheGrill event series has led the conversation on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology, bringing together newsmakers to debate the challenges of and opportunities for making content in the digital age. TheGrill delivers a unique series of curated discussions, industry panels and networking activations that explore the ever-changing media landscape.

TheGrill is powered by the essential source for entertainment insiders, WrapPRO, TheWrap’s premium content subscription platform. This members-only service and community provides deep analysis and access — that can’t be found anywhere else — on the business of entertainment, streaming and media. Click here for more information on WrapPRO.

The post AI Can Make Sets More Accessible, but the Tech Still Reflects Ableist Bias, Experts Warn appeared first on TheWrap.

“It’s a web of protections,” Bennett said of the union’s ongoing efforts to pass laws on the state, federal and local level to protect performers from unauthorized use of their likenesses. “None of these are the silver bullet that’s going to solve problems that we’re going to have to deal with when it comes to digital replication or synthetic content.”

The new Newsom-backed laws in California require contracts to specify the use of AI-generated digital replicas of a performer’s voice or likeness and prohibit the use of AI replicas of deceased performers without the consent of their estates.

The conversations with legislators and stakeholders in Hollywood and the tech industry surrounding what is covered by the First Amendment have been “exhaustive,” Bennett said in conversation with senior film reporter Jeremy Fuster at TheWrap’s annual conference.

“You’ve got decades and decades of case law dealing with the First Amendment and balancing it with IP rights. And that language was a huge compromise among broadcasters, studios, record labels, First Amendment scholars, artist advocacy groups, and obviously the unions,” said Bennett.

He added, “It is an imperfect compromise to accomplish a goal that I feel is urgent.”

Bennett explained he can accept compromises on other front if SAG-AFTRA’s main goals are met: “I am willing to live with those if I get an intellectual property right and voice likeness that — most importantly — allows you to take stuff down off of platforms,” he said, referring to the NO FAKES Act.

Bennett also discussed the post-strike developments in the fight to ensure that actors are guaranteed consent, compensation and control over use of their voice, likeness and performances in any AI programs used in productions.

Currently, SAG-AFTRA is on a new strike against video game and post-production companies that are signed to the Interactive Media Agreement, including Warner Bros. Games, Disney Character Voices, Activision Blizzard and Formosa Group. While the union came to terms with the companies on nearly all contract issues, the strike was ordered after SAG-AFTRA found the companies’ terms on AI protections to be too limiting in their scope.

SAG-AFTRA says the companies’ proposal would particularly leave motion capture performers vulnerable, as they are only offering performers rights to have consent and compensation over AI replications of their mocap work if it is for characters that share a likeness to the performer. Those characters make only a small fraction of the characters motion performers play for video games.

“What we’re saying to the video game companies is, ‘Step up, do the same thing that all these other industries and companies have done, and respect human creative performance, whether that’s voice or physical performance,” Bennett told TheWrap.

“If you are bringing people in to perform, to animate the characters in your video game, you need those human performances. Don’t then turn around and replicate those and use them across characters and across other video games without consent for each and every time you want to use that person’s performance. That’s as simple as I can put it,” he stated.

He cited the June Toys R Us ad created by OpenAI’s SORA as one of the most puzzling examples of what AI is currently being used for. “I’ve heard a lot of these AI companies talk, and they like to promise that AI will deliver scientific breakthroughs, medical breakthroughs, solve climate change,” said Bennett. “So why are you spending $100 billion to build a machine to make a Toys R Us ad? I don’t understand. I’m hopeful that consumers may agree with me that they don’t want to see all their content be synthetic.”

In 2025, Congress is expected to push forward on further AI regulations that SAG-AFTRA and other entertainment labor unions are lobbying for, including the NO FAKES Act, which has been introduced to both the House and Senate and enjoys bipartisan support.

About TheGrill: For 15 years, TheGrill event series has led the conversation on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology, bringing together newsmakers to debate the challenges of and opportunities for making content in the digital age. TheGrill delivers a unique series of curated discussions, industry panels and networking activations that explore the ever-changing media landscape.

TheGrill is powered by the essential source for entertainment insiders, WrapPRO, TheWrap’s premium content subscription platform. This members-only service and community provides deep analysis and access — that can’t be found anywhere else — on the business of entertainment, streaming and media. Click here for more information on WrapPRO.

Watch the full panel below:

The post New AI Protections Laws Aren’t a ‘Silver Bullet’ Against Rapidly Changing Tech, Says Top SAG-AFTRA Lawyer appeared first on TheWrap.

“It’s harder to get in. The paths that used to exist don’t. I think that’s really impacted everything,” Parent said at TheWrap’s annual Grill conference on Tuesday, observing that the field has been dominated historically by men, especially on “big films.”

“Those were the films I wanted to make,” Parent said.

The lack of progress for female producers in the business was raised by former New York Times journalist Laura Holson who moderated the panel which included Lucy Fisher, the producer of “Gladiator II” opens next month, and veteran executive and producer Sue Naegle, who produced this awards season contender “Nightbitch.” Holson cited data reflecting that between 1998 and 2023, the number of female producers had only increased by 2%.

“I can’t answer it. I don’t understand why those numbers don’t go up,” said Fisher, expressing frustration. “There’s an unrecognized bias and every woman in every field has to say, ‘I have to do it better than everybody else to get my spot.'”

Fisher recalled that she was the president of the Producers Guild for four years, and that at the time it was “almost 50/50.”

Parent, who is also the chairwoman of worldwide production for Legendary said that there was only one time in her career where the producer, the line producer and the unit production manager were all women. It was in 2012 on Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla” for Legendary.

On “Nightbitch,” producer Naegle noted that women produced the movie including Amy Adams, the movie’s star – and they also had a female writer/director in Marielle Heller (who also made “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” and “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”). Naegle said that mentorship is the key. “Mentorship is everything. It is the #1 thing that we can do to move those numbers is mentor young women,” Naegle stressed.

Another hurdle to women producing in the industry is the fact that so many productions are decamping for foreign locations, which is incredibly challenging for female producers who are also mothers, Fisher observed.

Fisher remembered a time when two or three movies would be made on the lot – she’d have her kids come to the studio and they’d walk around and peek in on the productions. “That doesn’t happen anymore,” Fisher said. “One thing about choosing life as a producer as a woman, it’s a big problem. They should have more jobs in California.”

This last comment got a rise out of Parent who shot back: “Good luck with that.”

The panel Powerhouse Producers was sponsored by Wrapbook Payroll.

About TheGrill: For 15 years, TheGrill event series has led the conversation on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology, bringing together newsmakers to debate the challenges of and opportunities for making content in the digital age. TheGrill delivers a unique series of curated discussions, industry panels and networking activations that explore the ever-changing media landscape.

TheGrill is powered by the essential source for entertainment insiders, WrapPRO, TheWrap’s premium content subscription platform. This members-only service and community provides deep analysis and access — that can’t be found anywhere else — on the business of entertainment, streaming and media. Click here for more information on WrapPRO.

Watch the full panel below:

The post ‘Dune’ Producer Mary Parent Says the Industry Has Gotten Worse for Female Producers: ‘It’s Harder to Get In’ | Video appeared first on TheWrap.

Merida’s comment came during a one-on-one interview with Oliver Darcy of Status News at TheWrap’s annual Grill conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Two major job cuts — one in June 2023 that eliminated 74 newsroom positions, and another 115 layoffs in January 2024 — were a driving factor in Merida’s decision, he said. Merida resigned two weeks before the January 2024 layoffs were announced.

“I came there to try to transform the place. It’s very hard. I thought the last round of layoffs — that was not something I thought was going to be beneficial to what we were trying to do to grow. … And there were some disagreements that the owner and I had,” Merida said.

One of those disagreements, TheWrap reported earlier this year, was Soon-Shiong’s interfering in editorial decisions — something that damaged his relationship with his top editor.

On Tuesday, Darcy asked if Soon-Shiong’s newsroom meddling influenced Merida’s decision to leave. Merida didn’t deny or confirm it, but said that wasn’t the norm at his previous roles. (He previously was an editor at The Washington Post and was editor-in-chief of ESPN’s The Undefeated.)

“Anyone who owns a newspaper, who owns a news organization, can do anything they want,” Merida replied. “It’s theirs, they own it. It’s not my experience, in the places I’ve worked, that you have that happen with owners.”

Merida added there were “a lot of factors” that led to his exit, including the Times’ “structure.”

“I’m not normally the kind of person who will leave a place, I’m trying to stay someplace. I’m trying to help the LA Times because I know how important it is to the people of Los Angeles, California, and really, to the nation. It can’t fail,” Merida said. “I did everything I could to stay there. I just thought ultimately, it was best for me to leave.”

Elsewhere during the panel, titled “The Next Chapter of Journalism in Los Angeles,” Darcy asked Merida about CBS’ recent interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates which the news organization said didn’t meet their standards as morning show anchor Tony Dokoupil pressed the author on his opinions on the Israel-Gaza war.

 “I was surprised to see the interview. It was uncommon. It was not like I’ve seen a book author receive,” he said. “The opening question about how [the book] could have been in the backpack of ‘extremists’ — I’ve never heard that as an opening question of an author. … It was a very surprising approach to an interview, to me.”

About TheGrill: For 15 years, TheGrill event series has led the conversation on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology, bringing together newsmakers to debate the challenges of and opportunities for making content in the digital age. TheGrill delivers a unique series of curated discussions, industry panels and networking activations that explore the ever-changing media landscape.

TheGrill is powered by the essential source for entertainment insiders, WrapPRO, TheWrap’s premium content subscription platform. This members-only service and community provides deep analysis and access — that can’t be found anywhere else — on the business of entertainment, streaming and media. Click here for more information on WrapPRO.

The post Ex-LA Times Editor Kevin Merida Says He Didn’t Want to Leave, Points to ‘Disagreements’ With Owner appeared first on TheWrap.

“When you are at a mainstream media organization, you do have a network; a safety net of people who are checking everything. So when it’s by yourself, it is a little different to push that publish button and you let it fly out into the world,” the Status founder told moderator and TheWrap CEO/editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman. “With a newsletter, especially, it’s a little different even than publishing online in that you cannot edit it. There’s no correction that you can really do afterward, right? It is in people’s inboxes. Once you hit send, it is gone and you can edit the web version, but it’s gone out to as many as thousands of people. So that was also a little terrifying.”

“I don’t have an in-house attorney at the moment, so I had to consult an attorney,” Darcy added of the story’s legal aspects. “I reached out and ended up talking to a couple people who did work with me, basically pro bono. So that was one thing, because if you’re dealing with a sensitive story like this, you want to make sure you’re legally buttoned up.”

Darcy’s comments came while discussing bringing traditional principles into new age journalism as part of the panel, “Uncensored: Top Journalists Debate Media, Tech & Entertainment.” His fellow panelists included Adam Lashinsky, former executive editor at Fortune; and Laura Holson, award-winning journalist and founder of The Box Sessions.

“It’s starting to matter less and less where the news breaks, as long as people trust you; if they trust that you have a good track record of reporting accurate information,” Darcy said. “If I publish it on my brand new website and newsletter, or if it’s published on CNN, I don’t really know if there would be any difference if I had published that story at CNN. I think it would have the same exact impact as it did when I published it on my own, and I think that’s really representative of the changing environment.”

Still, there are many rules of journalism the former CNN correspondent must abide by on his own.

“I followed those mainstream media protocols, so I wanted to make sure it’s fair to her and I reach out for comment, to her agent for comments and New York Magazine,” he explained. “So I did all of my own, and that was the normal process of reporting a story and so that part was pretty standard for me.”

“Any story like that, it’s obviously very sensitive and you want to make sure it’s right,” Darcy concluded. “But everything went smoothly and I think that it was almost comforting in a way. After about 30 to 45 minutes, CNN, my former employer, quickly confirmed all the key details.”

About TheGrill: For 15 years, TheGrill event series has led the conversation on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology, bringing together newsmakers to debate the challenges of and opportunities for making content in the digital age. TheGrill delivers a unique series of curated discussions, industry panels and networking activations that explore the ever-changing media landscape.

TheGrill is powered by the essential source for entertainment insiders, WrapPRO, TheWrap’s premium content subscription platform. This members-only service and community provides deep analysis and access — that can’t be found anywhere else — on the business of entertainment, streaming and media. Click here for more information on WrapPRO.

Watch the full panel below:

The post Oliver Darcy Says Breaking the Olivia Nuzzi-RFK Jr. Story as an Independent Journalist Was ‘Terrifying’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“You’re seeing the traditional business collapse,” he said in a conversation with entertainment entrepreneur Peter Guber and TheWrap’s editor in chief Sharon Waxman. “And at the same time, you’re seeing all this predatory behavior from the streamers and the two of them together are causing unbelievable cataclysm in the business that we both love.”

Sagansky accused Hollywood’s traditional studios of accelerating the decline of linear television by choosing to abandon programming in favor of streaming platforms, which led to what he called “predatory” behavior from streamers. 

“It’s still [a] $150 billion value business in terms of revenues,” he added, noting that major sports like the NBA, MLB and NFL alone represent a $40 billion business, much smaller by contrast. 

Sagansky also predicted that the four leading streamers — Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney/Hulu and Max — would form an entertainment oligopoly that is likely to draw scrutiny from government regulators.

Sagansky highlighted a total loss of $190 billion in value in the stock prices of major entertainment companies including Warner Bros Discovery, Disney and Paramount, noting that television, the traditional driver of the entertainment industry for half a century, has lost “almost half” of its audience.

Guber, another Hollywood veteran and CEO of Mandalay Entertainment and the Los Angeles Dodgers co-owner, noted that amid mass layoffs, steep cuts in production, and an anxious search for streaming profitability, there’s more uncertainty in Hollywood than ever.

“There will be blood, just like the movie, but there will also be opportunity,” Guber said. “Don’t give up on entertainment. It’s been around for thousands of years. It’s not going to go away in 2025.”

During the conversation, Sagansky said he is still astounded by how entertainment companies got to this point: by pushing their film and TV libraries to Netflix in response to the decline of the DVD market in the late 2000s and early 2010s. 

“When streaming starts, people have a choice they can make, and they make it. So what does cable do? They raised the prices. They produced less programming at a time when the building was on fire,” Sagansky said. “They just looked at their cash cow and said ‘OK, it’s over,’ and that was a fundamental mistake.”

While there are differences between live sports and the rest of entertainment, Guber believes there’s one key similarity to finding success in both worlds: find a position as the bridge between artist and audience. As part of the ownership groups behind the Dodgers and Warriors, he sees those teams’ venues — the new Chase Center in San Francisco and the venerable Dodger Stadium in L.A. — as “cathedrals” that foster generational connections between teams and fans. And he said he tries to make those venues into places that people feel active in the story being told during the game.

“You have to find your way through, to be active in your own rescue,” Guber said. “Don’t wait just for the government to give you a clear path. Create your own path. If you don’t, you will be on the dustbin of history.”

Sagansky and Guber also discussed the potential impact of artificial intelligence on filmmaking and whether it will expand or curtail opportunities for filmmakers. To see that debate, check out the clip above. (Full interview to follow.) 

During Tuesday’s TheGrill, five other business panels tackled different aspects of AI in Hollywood. 

In a panel focused on how to balance “innovation and ethics” actor and director Justine Bateman said AI would “burn the industry to the ground” by eliminating numerous job functions, which Edouard Harris, CTO of Gladstone AI, predicted that Hollywood would break off into a two-pronged system of those supporting and not supporting AI implementation.

In another panel moderated by Waxman, Fox Corp. CTO Melody Hildebrandt called on the industry to take a long view on AI and be “peers to big tech in the exploitation of it.” And in a spotlight conversation, Jeffrey Bennett, SAG-AFTRA’s general counsel, broke down the timeline for what needs to happen for AI protections to be adopted nationwide. 

And in an afternoon session about balancing the protection of creative rights with opportunities, Alexandra Shannon, head of strategic development at CAA, detailed the creation of theCAAvault to store actors’ likenesses for use in other AI-generated applications with legal consent. 

Not all the day’s event dealt with AI. Two panels featured top journalists like former New York Times staffer Laura Holson, Oliver Darcy and former LA Times Executive Director Kevin Merida, discussing the state of the media industry.

And in a session centered on redefining success in sports and business, WNBA Champion Sue Bird and soccer legend Megan Rapinoe, along with Olympic gymnast Nastia Liukin, discussed how mainstream traction for women’s sports continues to be met with gaslighting and industry resistance. “The goalpost is moving,” Rapinoe said.

About TheGrill: For 15 years, TheGrill event series has led the conversation on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology, bringing together newsmakers to debate the challenges of and opportunities for making content in the digital age. TheGrill delivers a unique series of curated discussions, industry panels and networking activations that explore the ever-changing media landscape.

TheGrill is powered by the essential source for entertainment insiders, WrapPRO, TheWrap’s premium content subscription platform. This members-only service and community provides deep analysis and access — that can’t be found anywhere else — on the business of entertainment, streaming and media. Click here for more information on WrapPRO.

Watch the full panel below:

The post Industry Veteran Jeff Sagansky Rebukes Hollywood Studios for Decisions Leading to ‘Unbelievable Cataclysm in the Business’ appeared first on TheWrap.

“We’re buying the Dolby Theater,” Sagansky told The Wrap’s editor-in-chief Sharon Waxman during the opening Spotlight Conversation at TheWrap’s TheGrill conference on Tuesday. 

“Because it’s owned by CalPERS, and CalPERS basically does nothing,” Sagansky added. “It’s the only theater I’ve ever been in where there’s no concessions. You ever been in a theater where there was no concessions? So, you know, they just didn’t book it. They used it for the Academy Awards, a couple of other events. It’s a huge, beautiful theater building, only 20 years old, and it’s not used at all.”

Representatives for CalPERS did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.

Sagansky is the CEO and president of Double Eagle Acquisition Group. He previously served as the president of Sony Pictures Entertainment, president of CBS Entertainment and CEO of TriStar Pictures.

The theater seats 3,400 people and sits in the heart of Hollywood in a complex long known as Hollywood and Highland until recently. The Oscars are contracted with the venue through 2028. The theater also hosts premieres and holds concerts and screenings throughout the year.

The shopping and entertainment center in which the Dolby Theatre sits, which was recently renovated and changed its name to Ovation Hollywood, includes retail shops, restaurants, a movie theater complex and other businesses. It abuts the legendary TCL Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.

The Dolby opened in 2001 and has been the Oscars’ home ever since, becoming the 13th location to host the show. The ceremony had previously been held in either the the Shrine Auditorium or the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion since 1969. Other venues have included the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Pantages Theater, the Chinese Theatre and the Roosevelt Hotel, which hosted the inaugural Oscars on May 16, 1929, five months before the “Black Tuesday” Wall Street crash.

The Dolby Theatre is majority owned by the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and managed by investment firm Canyon Partners. Brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. repped CalPERS and the Dolby Theatre in the deal.

The post Jeff Sagansky in Talks to Buy Dolby Theatre | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.

But they may not be who you expect them to be. 

Start with AI. The arrival of artificial intelligence has moved past the panic phase to where we are now: What does it mean for me? 

At this year’s annual TheGrill conference, held Tuesday at the DGA Theater Complex, experts from Hollywood’s major studios will address where the industry’s biggest content producers are focused. We will hear from AI companies themselves who will talk about the ethics that continue to raise concerns for IP and copyright holders. And we will hear from creatives about how they are using AI to drive efficiency in their work and allowing them to stretch their abilities well beyond where they thought possible. 

At the same time: yes, some jobs will be made easier. But some jobs will be lost.  

This once-in-a-generation technological shift leapfrogs so many other changes that technology has brought to entertainment and media. But it is not the only change that is shifting the macroeconomics of our business, as is evident by the frustrating downward pressure on entertainment stocks.  

The stock prices of Hollywood’s historic major studios — Disney, Warner, Paramount — are down by 40% or more in the past three years. Disney and Warner are celebrating their centennials this year, and shares of Warner and Paramount are down 70% in the last five years. Meanwhile, Netflix, the streaming giant founded in 1997 as a mail order DVD rental service, stands at $701 per share at this writing. 

This is creating its own cascade of changes. 

Thousands of job losses have happened this year alone in cuts at Paramount, Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery and Lionsgate, in a full employment economy. These companies are adjusting to the new economic realities. 

TheWrap has written about independent producers changing careers; below-the-line veterans surviving on unemployment checks; production professionals starting side hustle jobs like Emmy-nominated hairdresser Sallie Ciganovich, who cuts hair in her backyard. 

Some sectors are being hurt more than others. Independent film has been in crisis for some time – even the best movies at Sundance have a hard time finding distribution. There’s the decline in reality TV production, as TheWrap wrote about Monday. And we have delved into what the results of a pivot to streaming five years ago has brought legacy Hollywood companies — and what that portends.

If ever TheGrill’s conversation about the changes technology has brought to the creators of content mattered, it’s right now. 

When we started TheGrill 15 years ago, entertainment looked very different. Netflix had only barely started a streaming service. Twitter was brand new. Facebook was still in its early years. Some guys had sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion, which seemed pretty crazy at the time.  

The box office was healthy. Cable television brought in billions of dollars to Comcast, which had just bought NBCUniversal, as well as to carrier companies like Charter, Cox and AT&T, and to Hollywood’s entertainment conglomerates like Viacom and Disney.

The streaming revolution is painful, but these changed consumer habits are here to stay.  

In response to all this, the industry is in the midst of a realignment, and it is what we will explore with our speakers, including Peter Guber, who led Sony and has Mandalay Pictures along with ownership in the L.A. Dodgers and the Golden State Warriors; and Jeff Sagansky, who has not only led CBS and NBC when networks were king, but now is a central figure in the drive for public investment via SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies), in his case for DraftKings and Lionsgate Studios. 

We’re excited to bring the smartest minds and most dynamic thought leaders to TheGrill this year. Those who will not only survive the shift that’s underway, but find the opportunity and prevail. 

The post TheGrill 2024: Navigating Change for Those Who Plan to Survive the Disruption appeared first on TheWrap.

Written and produced by Barry Jenkins, the film tells the true story of Claressa ‘T-Rex’ Shields, a boxer from Flint, Michigan who trained to become the first woman in her country’s history to win an Olympic gold medal in the sport, only to realize that not all dreams are created equal and the real fight has only just begun. Starring Ryan Destiny and Brian Tyree Henry, “The Fire Inside” premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival and will be released in theaters on Dec. 25.

Morrison was the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography for her work on “Mudbound.” She is also the first woman to lead cinematography on a Marvel superhero movie, the box office hit “Black Panther.” Most recently, Morrison has directed “The Morning Show” for Apple TV+, “Impeachment: American Crime Story” for FX and “The Mandalorian” for Disney+. She also directed the pilot of the Starz series “Hightown.”

Click here to view the full program and to buy tickets.

For more than a decade, TheWrap’s Grill event series has led the conversation on the convergence of entertainment, media and technology, bringing together newsmakers to debate the challenges of and opportunities for making content in the digital age. TheGrill delivers a unique series of curated discussions, industry panels and networking activations that explore the ever-changing media landscape. 

TheGrill 2024 sponsors include Easterseals Southern California, City National Bank, Wrapbook Payroll, Veritone, Inc., SAG-AFTRA, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, Sony Pictures, New York Festivals, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku Media, The Los Angeles Film School, Disney and Fox.

The post Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Rachel Morrison Joins TheGrill 2024 appeared first on TheWrap.